Healthy Holiday Cooking with Kids: Edible Christmas Trees

Recently momstown Oakville posted a  blog on Cooking with Kids: Ice cream cone Christmas trees and it looked liked so much fun that we decided to give it a try with our momstown Milton chapter but with a twist. 

Our little Chipmunks (ages 2-5) were very excited at the prospect of decorating their very own Christmas Trees and actually getting to eat it once they were done! 

What you need:

1. Sugar cones  

2. Cream cheese - leave out at room temperature for 20mins to soften to make it easier to spread

3. Edible ornaments for the trees (we used orange and red diced peppers, blueberries and raisins - but as with anything, you can use whatever you have on hand. Remember that the more colour the better! ) 

4. Green food colouring (optional) 

5. Spreading utensils and plates 

What you need 

 Assembly: 

1. Each child was given one ice cream cone. 

 

2. Add green food colouring to the cream cheese and dye the cheese until you achieve the shade of green that you want. 

3. The children were then given cream cheese to spread evenly over their ice cream cone. Be sure to handle with care to avoid breakage. 


4. Once the cream cheese was evenly spread over the ice cream cone, the fun of tree decorating began. The little ones unleashed their inner artist and created away! 

Spreading cream cheese is serious business

 

 

The best part of this craft was that it provided a variety of healthy fruits and veggies for the kids to choose from. The moms couldn't believe some of the choices their little ones made during the assembly process and loved the idea of this easy, healthy holiday treat!


Can I eat now?

Our Junior Chefs will be making Nutella Bars and Parfaits for December and Veggie Lasagna for January. All of the supplies for our Junior Chef program are included in your yearly momstown membership of just $45 a year. Sign up now for your free 6 week trial!

Written by Liz Marques Kogan, a momstown Milton member and mother of two girls.

You can check out her blog at www.orchidaforever.blogspot.ca

Have you heard the exciting news....

momstown.ca owner Ann-Marie has won the SavvyMom mom entrepreneur of the year award!

All of us momstown mamas are so proud of Ann-Marie! This is definitely a result of all the hard work she puts into the momstown communities on a daily basis! She is a dynamic, charismatic individual who genuinely cares for us all and offers a lending hand whenever needed! I am so honoured to be a part of the momstown movement!

Read about how this award has touched our momstown founder Ann-Marie and what she plans on doing with it!



In celebration we want to thank everyone by giving each and every one of you a FREE month of membership! This applies to current members, trial members, new members and even former members to come back and experience all that momstown has to offer! Check out the details below and don't forget to sign up by Oct 28th!


MEMBERS win when we win! Free one month membership to NEW members and a free month extension for EXISTING or EXPIRED members. To redeem, please register on your local site and complete the form* at http://momstown-moments.momstown.ca/node/372. Available between Oct 21- 28th. Memberships will be extended the first week of November.

PLUS, are you an ONLINE MOM ENTREPRENEUR? momstown wants to share our success by offering Online Mom Entrepreneurs exposure with a FREE national contest & member discount listing! Details, rules*, and entry at http://momstown-moments.momstown.ca/node/372. Available from Oct 21-Oct 28 for ad activity Nov – Dec 2011

Looking forward to connecting with all of you!

Sam Kassam-Macfie
your momstown Milton mama

Having a Hay Day with Scribble n Splatter

Our momstown Milton moms and tots had a great time decorating scarecrows at our monthly visit with Scribble n Splatter. We started off by using water coloured paints to make the backdrop. The kids had fun dipping their brushes in the water and swirling it around the paint to get the colours they wanted. Some of them discovered that they could create new colours by mixing two paints together!





Once the backdrops were completed, we gathered around to have circle time. We weren't sure how many in attendance actually knew exactly what a scarecrow was so we decided to read our book "Story Country" by Derek Anderson that was provided by our awesome partners at Scholastic Canada. This was a cute story about building a farm from scratch and all of the components that are necessary to make it complete including a very pretty scarecrow! We then sang a few songs to go along with our theme including the Floppy Scarecrow where the kids got to role play how a scarecrow guards the crops.





We then gathered around the table to finish off the craft by dressing up our men with patches of fabric and straw. Once they were glued on to the water colour backdrops, the mural was complete! What a colourful masterpiece! To see all of the great pics from this event click here.






Join us next month when we learn about the wild west - Yee Ha!
Register for a FREE 6 week trial membership by signing up here.

Another fabulous resource brought to you from momstown!

Title: Is Time Out a Waste of Your Time?
Location: Webinar (virtual training)

Date: Thursday, October 20th from 2PM -3PM EST
Date: Monday, October 24th from 9PM – 10PM EST

Description:
momstown is excited to partner again with Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, to offer a free live training webinar to our members!

The session is…Why Time Out is a Waste of Time! Amy promises that we’ll walk away with concrete discipline tools we can use the next day and see results. In fact, you’ll learn one of the all-time “parent favourite” tools for stopping any power struggle in its tracks. You can watch, listen and even interact with our host, Amy. Participants are not required to have a webcam, only a computer with speakers.

You'll love the way this webinar is structured. Amy is right there LIVE, a video image of her is in the upper left corner of your monitor the whole time. As she talks with you, you'll watch her PowerPoint presentation that is packed with valuable information. She'll also stop to answer our questions about difficulties and needs when it comes to getting our kids to listen.

You will also have the option to write in specific questions and she’ll address them, right there for you!

All you have to do is RSVP (sorry due to limited ‘seats’, you MUST register on positive parenting) (http://www.positiveparentingsolutions.com/momstown) and then kick back and learn the proven strategies to Get Kids to Listen without Nagging, Reminding or Yelling!

Have a friend(s) that are not momstown members that you think could benefit from this training? Please Invite Them Too! Just share this registration link http://www.positiveparentingsolutions.com/momstown!!

About Amy McCready:

Parenting expert Amy McCready is the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which has empowered thousands of parents worldwide to correct their kids’ misbehavior without nagging, reminding or yelling. Amy is a frequent guest on the TODAY show and has also appeared on Rachael Ray, CNN, Fox & Friends, MSNBC, and elsewhere. A regular contributor to the TODAY Mom’s blog, Amy lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband and two sons.

Busy Bees at Work

Can't stand the heat of the not having an activity to engage your little one in? Come join our monthly momstown Milton Junior Chef program. This months recipe was peanut butter bumble bees.



We started off the event by rounding up all of our participants to get their hands washed and prepped for handling the ingredients.



We then gathered around the table and listened as our instructor Mary-Anne Selwa from My Smart Hands read the steps out loud and our little busy bees went right to work executing each request. The kids were given spatulas to scoop out globs of peanut butter, spoons to mix the ingredients together, and we used our bare hands to crush the graham wafers into fine pieces. Once the mixture was set, it was time to roll it into balls to create the bodies. What a gooey mess!






The balls were lined up on wax paper and the finishing touches - the drizzling of the chocolate and the almond sliver wings were added to complete the bumble bee creations.




Momstown is sensitive to food allergies and will modify our recipe selections if we are informed of any such issues. We did post to ensure no one attending this event had a peanut allergy for the safety of all of our participants. If you would like to learn more about the great interactive, educational events that momstown Milton has to offer, please contact info.milton@momstown.ca.

Mucking around with the Boar and Chick

A little rain....ok alot of rain wasn't going to dampen our momstown members spirits for our tour today at the Boar & Chick. We suited up in our rain coats and rubber boots and headed out to the barn to see the new batch of baby piglets.





They were absolutely adorable that we needed to get a closer look. Tania was kind enough to take them out of the pen and allow us to pet them. I kept on saying "piggy, oink, oink" and my darling son Jaxon immediately started signing for food. Too funny! We were able to pick up some interesting facts about pigs such as their gestation cycle is 3-3-3: three months, three weeks and three days and the little ones give out an ear piercing high pitched squeal as a way to communicate that they are in distress.






We then headed up to the loft to see the chickens. There were about 75 chickens that produce approximately 6 dozen eggs daily that needed to be collected. So we put the kids to work gathering the eggs from each of the coupes. A chicken lays one egg per day for the first year and then starts to slow down to one egg every 2-3 days. by the time they get to the end of their cycle, the eggs that are produced are less frequent but larger and tend to have a double yolk.






We braved the rain as Mark took us outside and guided us around the property and down to the creek. We were able to see signs of the beavers busy at work building a dam, the place where some deer had laid down for the night and even picked up a toad in our travels.




When we got back to the barn, there was a refreshing batch of lemonade and chocolate covered bacon for us to sample. It sure sounded like an odd combination but once we bit into it, we were asking for more. We also did a little bit of shopping and picked up some farm fresh eggs and bacon to take home with us.




A big thank you goes out to Rhonda our tour guide and Mark and Tania the owners of the Boar & Chick for having momstown Milton & momstown Burlington as their guests. We had a terrific adventure!

Crafty Critters - Beautiful Butterflies

Every month momstown has a theme that all of the chapters incorporate into our events for the month. May's educational curriculum theme was Butterflies and Bullfrogs. The kids were very excited to see the tables set up with feathers, bingo dabbers and colourful beads to create their one of a kind butterfly.




The infants had their own special art piece to create. They were given some paint and a bath sponge and then let loose to see what they could come up with. A few of them decided to get creative by picking up the paint bowls and mixing them together. The outcome was stunning! We weren't able to cut out the butterfly since the paint was still wet but the moms were given the pipe cleaner antenna's and google eyes to complete the project at home.





Check out some of the other crafts that were completed this month by our sister chapters momstown Newmarket and Aurora, momstown Central Alberta and momstown Guelph!

Tiara's, Tutus and Prince Charming

Our group enjoyed a very magical morning today at the Dance Shoppe for our momstown Milton Mother's Day Tea Party held on Friday May 6th. The moms and tots arrived in their dazzling outfits that included tiara's, tutus and a few Prince Charming dudes!








Miss Lindsay started off the event with a free tumbling demo that had our little ones bouncing, singing and dancing too!




Then we were off to put together our Mother's Day craft for our moms to take home as a keepsake. The craft was a flower stem with a beautiful sentimental poem printed beside it. All of the kids were able to participate in creating a hand or footprint stamp that completed the picture for moms to take home and frame.



Once craft time was over, it was time for tea! We all sat down to a formal place setting with some very tasty treats to sample. There were finger sandwiches, croissants and a variety of delicious jams from Springridge farms, biscuits, apple juice, Starbucks coffee and a wide selection of teas to sip on.




Circle time was next and we sure did have fun singing songs about love to our mamas, playing with the parachute and reading a book titled "Are you my Mummy?" Little Polar Bear. It was all about a little polar bear cub trying to find his mummy and all of the different types of animals he meets during his search. Simple yet engaging for all ages!





Sadly enough the event came to an end however for a few lucky mamas the pampering will continue with some fantastic services / items from Karen's flower shop and Allegra Spa.

Here is a glimpse of how a few of our sister chapters were spoiling their members.momstown Barrie, momstown Newmarket and Auroraand momstown Burlington. Happy Mother's Day to all!